By Alton H. Maddox, Jr. (“Attorney-at-War”)
Someone with at least one blinking brain cell should have vetted Donald Trump before he threw his hat in the ring for the 2016 presidential sweepstakes. The front page of the current “The Economist” reads, “Art of the Lie”. After reading his resume, it did not take a rocket scientist to conclude: Donald J. Trump is a “pathological liar”.
In response to Trump’s long-standing lie that President Barack Obama was born outside of the United States, the “First Lady” responded, “Barack Obama has answered those questions by going high when they go low”. This advice should have been shared with all persons of African ancestry.
When enslaved Africans had to flee plantations to save the Union based on a fraudulent, executive proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln, who had put his foot in his mouth and had bitten off more than he could chew, our own citizenship became suspect. Whites enjoy the “Bill of Rights” while blacks suffer a “Bill of Rites”.
When blacks fled the plantations, there was no time for mental therapy after they had suffered four hundred years of barbaric oppression and without orientation and remedial education. These Africans also fled those plantations with bad reputations arising out of the U.S. Constitution and bad habits from pirates, slave personnel and the slave codes.
This is constitutional defamation. No other ethnic group in the United States has suffered constitutional defamation. Trump defamed President Obama. This is the appropriate time for the U.S. Congress to enact legislation giving descendants of enslaved Africans a retroactive, cause of action for constitutional defamation.
Among other things, I will guarantee you that if Congress had enacted this legislation, Trump would retreat, with hat in hand, crying loudly, mea culpa, in order to save his empire. Derogatory language would go out the window. The late Dr. William A. Jones said it best: The white man is rational on every subject except race. There is a cause and effect between derogatory and defamatory language and irrational conduct.
On this Saturday evening, most nationally recognized titleholders will be assembling for the annual banquet and dinner of the Congressional Black Caucus. From the time that I attended Jim Crow schools in Coweta County, GA, I have been known as a problem-solver. In those Jim Crow schools, I was taught by some of the finest professors in the nation.
The more-than-forty million persons of African ancestry should lobby all members of U.S. Congress, all day on Saturday, for anti-defamation legislation. No one has more grievances against the United States than descendants of enslaved Africans. These grievances have remained unaddressed.
Gov. Mario Cuomo defamed me for my defense of racially motivated victims of African ancestry in Howard Beach. The defense led to unprecedented “hate crime” legislation. Twenty-six years later, I am still being denied my privilege to earn a living. For starters, the seminal cases are Scott v. Sandford 60 U.S. 393 (1857) and New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964).
9/16/16